I too tuned into Conan’s last Tonight Show and have also marveled at the class he’s displayed during this media storm/NBC meltdown over the last two weeks. On Friday’s show he took a moment to step it up another level by not only being kind to his employer of so many years, but to also forcibly and emotionally beg any young people watching that cynicism and selfishness are not on the path leading to anywhere important. In this media & celebrity atmosphere we live in/under I thought it was pretty much a revolutionary statement, and certainly worth sharing here. I for one am taking it to heart.
Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
Conan
Sunday, January 24th, 2010Ouroboros
Sunday, January 17th, 2010Found in the “things you might not know about John” folder: I really don’t like needles, thus I don’t have any tattoos. But if I did have a tattoo it would definitely depict the ancient symbol of a serpent eating it’s own tail, Ouroboros. I was thinking about the dragon today in relation to this new year and decade when a lot of us are feeling like we are on the edge of something different, new and old, devouring our past to stake out the future while simultaneously trying to strip away artifice and excess in an attempt to get back to the genesis of our creative energies. Whether its video, promotion, projects, or just your reading list – there is a palpable energy in the air this January that whatever has come before we are starting over again.
Last week I notched my first editorial gig of the decade (details TK) and even though I have shot for the client before and have shot many, many jobs like it over the past 7 freelance years, I was nervous waiting for the “thumbs up!” call from my editor. I knew I had worked hard, saw well, shot a ton of options, etc.; but still there was that feeling in my stomach. In a lot of ways that feeling is such a gift at this point in my career. That split-second sensation as the caller ID lights up where you go into super fast-forward of the whole shoot, every missed shot, out of focus frame, dodgy lighting cue, and awkward banter with the subject… and then of course they love it and are excited to talk about specific pictures they really dug and how they hope to publish more than they initially planned. But that feeling that you remember from the early days, the mistakes, the gambles that paid off…
Beyond the individual it’s not hard right now to see signs of Ouroboros everywhere: the publishing industry destroying itself before being reborn again with the Tablet?; or maybe the DSLR/HD video “revolution” stepping out of the ashes of newspaper multimedia?
The year might start slowly for many in terms of tangible work with clients themselves slow to get back behind their desks. But I feel like this January has already been 2 months long in the amount of thinking and re-thinking of photography goals, promotional approach, and personal needs. Being in your head can certainly become a problem but right now it feels important, what with the rapidly shifting photography world beneath us. Of course after this thinking I’m running out of the door to take pictures and when the calls do begin to pick up in earnest I’ll feel ready to sprint, tail or not.
Now, next
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009Hopefully by now you all have watched the new demos of Magazine 3.0’s (?) that have been released lately (Wired, Sports Illustrated). Sigh. Even if you ignore the simple fact that they have been made for a platform that has not even been announced yet (have we ever seen so many major media companies tying their fates to Apple before? Because lets face it, only Apple is capable of delivering a game-changing new platform right now) we still have a few pretty big problems with the Next generation. First of all, there is very little next to be found.
This is a 100,000 word discussion and I just don’t have the energy for all of that. So let me break it down in notepad form on what is keeping me up at night this week.
- More shocking than how depressing that Wired video is (WTF is going on with the audio, are all magazines going to be read in techno clubs in the future?!), is that the concept is basically Advanced-PDF. Hold the phone… Wired is one of the best designed, most thoughtful magazines being published today, so how could their new product look like it was built on the following budget: 24 pizzas, 2 cases of Red Bull, 1 overtime weekend with 4 code monkeys and a bored assistant art director?
- Before I saw the Sports Illustrated video (which I was impressed by), I first saw this link from TechCrunch… and in seeing just that picture of the SI page (looked a lot like looking up micro film in the public library, and even the page looked yellowed in the image as if it was really old) I almost lost my shit. Oh my god, oh my god, we are all doomed…
- “Magazines are fucked, still” has been the prevailing comments from the Tech blogs I’ve seen in the past 24 hours… heavy use of sarcasm and “even if this didn’t suck” no one is going to pay for it, with a bunch of “content should be free” sort of bullshit as well. Guess what assholes, content is not going to be free and all of the little filter/bottom feeders out there from HuffPost on down are going to go into their own little tailspin as soon as the big media corporations put up pay walls to nearly all of their incredibly expensive content. So now you can’t just link and comment anymore… uh, oh, looks who’s fucked now.
- Tablets aren’t coming out in the next 6 months, and we’ll probably be lucky to be waking up next to one covered in drool this time next year. But obviously with this sort of support and groundswell they are coming.
- Tablets are going to be expensive and the only one making any money at all on them at all in the next year is probably going to be the hardware manufacturers.
- I’m really excited for The New York Times to put up a pay wall… like today. I can’t wait to pay them for their incredibly well executed content. I’m so excited that I just bought a New Yorker digital-only subscription. A lot of us are… stop giving it away and allowing everyone else to build sites that just loot those links and rake in ad revenue.
- If this Sports Illustrated mock-up is even 40% as hungry as the final release, the need for imagery, still and moving, is going up at Time Inc maybe 500% or more. This is why anyone signing a contract that gives away all digital rights for their work right now is going to be in huge trouble.
- The only thing I liked about the Wired demo was that it looked like you could actually read the text, which is one of the worst things about reading on the internet now. Please build in a Kindle-like integrated text-only mode so that those few of us who actually read anymore can do so without ruining their vision.
- Catharine P. Taylor wrote in her bnet “piece” this morning about the SI video that “it’s too late” for magazines… that’s bullshit. Catharine, you and every person like you, including me, and hundreds of millions of people around the world today, even more than yesterday or 5 years ago or 50 years ago wants to be informed, wants information, wants media. They want it on their own terms and they don’t want publishing to act like they are a bunch of moronic idiots who only want Hollywood gossip, a casserole recipe, and the jumble — but they want it.
- And lastly I just want to remind all of the scholars out there delivering these sermons on the future of media and blah blah blah blah that you can’t begin the story from a flat, even plane. The story begins in hell, with buildings on fire and people straight-up scared. And from that place the bullshitting about social media has to be understood because we aren’t in fairy-land and bloggers aren’t necessarily adding anything at all to the conversation, or at the very least are rarely “experts.” It’s not about crafting a democracy of information… it’s about creating a better, more engaging, and more informative experience that runs on CONTENT.
Dirty 305
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
As most of you know — because who doesn’t read Pop Photo & PDN cover-to-cover every month, right? – - John Loomis Photography was featured in both industry mags’ December issues. First up, Popular Photography asks me “How to” (click on the image above to see it larger/clearer) in a re-cap of a Men’s Health assignment that I shot in Quantico, VA on evolving real-world training methods for the Marines. The original concept of the how-to was to show my select and then a bunch of crappy frames (I make a lot of those) which missed the mark, illustrating how-not-to, but they instead wisely chose a direct approach. Important tip included in the story: I get dirty. Thanks to Pop Photo’s Debbie Grossman for reaching out to me, and to Men’s Health Michelle Stark, for giving me the job (and excuse to get dirty) in the first place. For those interested, the rest of short piece is below:
Next up is Photo District News, who delivers an updated City Guide on Miami in their new issue, in which I’m quoted a few times – the most honest of which are not attributed, thanks Conor! I haven’t seen the print edition yet, but if its fun and/or has a sweet pic by yours truly in there, I’ll update to let you have a nice chuckle.
Working in Miami continues to be love/hate for me, but I do appreciate it a bit more now that I spend most of my time in NYC. The people, attitude, traffic, pretentiousness, and $$ are hard to deal with… but the weather is insane and local color & backgrounds can be fantastic if you know where to look, plus I like pork sandwiches a lot. Purely photographically-speaking it’s not an easy place to be for any thing other than catalog or fashion shoots. The local clients mostly pay terrible and demand the world, the pool of assistants is thin, and the photo gallery scene is non-existent most of the year (at least I’ve rarely seen signs of life outside of Basel). But as I’ve said many times before, standing on the beach in mid-January, when the weather is a chilly 74, you feel like a genius.
King content
Monday, August 17th, 2009“Content is king,” I wrote in this morning’s JLP newsletter (click here to subscribe). Though there is an easy joke to make about who in their right mind wants to be king in the wasteland of our current publishing crisis, I do truly believe that original content is the only ladder tall enough for any magazine to climb out of this financial blackhole and fundamentally transform their product.
It should go without saying that in the digital era of $0.00 (or at least very low) distribution costs, magazines can not solely be a vessel for advertising, eg. subscriptions once again have to pay the bills (or at least a real share). The only eyeballs you’ll get moving forward are those who find something meaningful and original in your pages, or something sordid and time-wasting (Perez), and so the bloodletting within the halls of the editorial offices has got to stop if the magazine will survive.
In this vacuum of thinner and thinner titles eventually a major magazine (and then many) is going to cut their losses (only cutting down trees for special occasions) and move to online-only, and begin to stuff each issue with unique content. Doing so might then cut short the portals and meta-filters (as the real content gets put behind a pay wall). Instead of opining about the news or its’ spin, we’ll have people reporting on issues again. And if you believe in media you’ve got to believe that if someone creates important content there will be millions of subscribers willing to consume it. If people are not hungry for news anymore than the publishing industry is already finished… we only need sudoku puzzle books from here on out.
A lot of people are tracking Kindle and e-book technology, and have been frothing at the mouth at the still unknown potential of an Apple iTablet. But it seems obvious that a new portable, wireless, full-color and video capable platform/device has got to be part of the new media paradigm. If so, then the real question is how long can publishing wait until they’ve burned through every bit of capital left (surely the ego-driven old school publishers are losing their nerve by now)? Will we save ourselves in time enough to make good on the elephant-sized paradox of modern publishing… magazines are dying inversely proportionate to the world becoming more connected and media-hungry every day ever more than ever before in history.
That’s what it looks like from here… I’m sure I’m getting part (or most) of it wrong, but I still have some faith left. And I’m really excited about the possibility that out of this insanity their may even be born a sort of rebirth of journalism and original story telling. JLP HQ will be here ready and waiting to dig in and make a contribution to restoring content back to its rightful place.